Why would 'guix system reconfigure' downgrade Guix?

Why would 'guix system reconfigure' downgrade Guix?

[Chris Marusich]

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Hi,

In the "Invoking guix system" section of the Guix manual, it says:

    Note: It is highly recommended to run ‘guix pull’ once before you
    run ‘guix system reconfigure’ for the first time (*note Invoking
    guix pull::).  Failing to do that you would see an older version of
    Guix once ‘reconfigure’ has completed.

Why would I see an older version of Guix?

-- 
Chris

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Re: Why would 'guix system reconfigure' downgrade Guix?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com> skribis:

> In the "Invoking guix system" section of the Guix manual, it says:
>
>     Note: It is highly recommended to run ‘guix pull’ once before you
>     run ‘guix system reconfigure’ for the first time (*note Invoking
>     guix pull::).  Failing to do that you would see an older version of
>     Guix once ‘reconfigure’ has completed.
>
> Why would I see an older version of Guix?

When you run ‘guix system reconfigure’, that installs a new system with
a new guix-daemon service.  The guix-daemon binary of that service is
taken from the ‘guix’ package of the current Guix.

On a freshly installed GuixSD 0.12.0, the ‘guix’ package points to a
slightly older snapshot.  So if you run ‘reconfigure’, the new system
will run that slightly older snapshot.  If you run ‘reconfigure’ again
from there, the new system will run yet an older snapshot.  And so on.

See?

The crux of the matter is that the ‘guix’ package in Guix is not “self”.
‘current-guix’ does that, but it’s a bit of a hack since it takes
whatever source files appear to be part of the current Guix.

HTH!

Ludo’.